OpenTelemetry Collector
The OpenTelemetry Collector is a vendor-neutral service that receives, processes, and exports telemetry data — traces, metrics, and logs — decoupling instrumented applications from the specific observability backends they report to.
Baseline topologies
| Topology | Minimum nodes | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| gateway | 2 | otel-collector-gateway |
| agent-plus-gateway | 3 | otel-collector-agent, otel-collector-gateway |
What drives the cost
- Peak telemetry throughput (events/second)
- Peak combined throughput of traces, metrics, and logs flowing through the collector. Primary driver for CPU and memory.
- Number of pipelines
- Number of configured receiver/processor/exporter pipelines. Each pipeline adds processing overhead.
Where it runs
bare_metal, dedicated, cloud_vm
Size OpenTelemetry Collector and get a cost estimate